Like virtually every other aspect of American culture, our language has been corporatized; poisoned, convoluted, and robotized – all in the name of “efficiency”. Whoever first uttered the phrase “think outside the box” deserves a big bonus. However, the next person I hear use it will get my foot up their ass. While it’s initial appeal as a simple metaphor with a bit of a twist was undeniable, it’s been so overused that it’s now an “executive summary” of someone’s entire capability, tacitly implying the person in question hasn’t had an original idea in years. Even if the topic at hand has no need for an original idea. I mean, if you’re working at a McDonald’s, how far out of the box does your thinking need to be? Does the corporatization of our language really matter? You bet your ass it does. Language is the only way we truly know each other. Without it, we’d be just another species picking insects out of one another’s hair and feeding on them. Contrary to popular belief, this poisoned well is not a recent development. All the way back in 1916 Teddy Roosevelt declared that the “tendency to use what have been called ‘weasel words’ is one of the defects of our nation.” He clarified with this example, “You can have universal training or you can have voluntary training, but when you use the word ‘voluntary’ to qualify the word ‘universal,’ you are using a weasel word,” he said. “It has sucked all the meaning out of “universal”. Words that suck the meaning (and life) out. Yep, that’s what’s happened to our language. But with technology, it now happens at blinding speed and the idiotic linguistic offerings pile up like cars on a ice-covered freeway. As 2011 drew...